Two more Microsoft Job ads caught my attention today after I saw the one related to Windows / Windows Phone 8. The first one is for a Windows Phone Program Manager who will be responsible for the application multitasking and background processing feature (surprised that their isn’t already PM handling this) and for bringing new multitasking features to the OS:

We are looking for an experienced, driven, and innovative Program Manager that understands the needs of the application developer and has the creative thinking necessary to bring new experiences and capabilities to Windows Phone. As part of the Windows Phone team, you will be the overall owner for application multitasking and background processing feature areas and will be responsible for bringing new multitasking features to the Windows Phone. As a senior PM on the team you will be responsible for creating project plans, owning the overall feature area strategy, and demoing and presenting plans to senior management. Additionally, you will work closely with customers, partners, and ISVs to present current designs, develop applications to demo and drive concepts. and analyze and prioritize feedback.

Qualifications Include
•Bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer science or engineering
•At least 5 years experience designing and shipping commercial software
•5 years experience with managed code development and debugging (e.g. C#, Java)
•Experience with API design and development
•Experience with Silverlight, XNA, and/or Windows Phone, Android, or iPhone development is a huge plus

Menlo is a codename that has been buzzing on the net ever since Mary Jo Foley first talked about it a couple of months ago. It has be speculated that this was probably Redmond’s attempt to build a new mobile operating system or something close to this. Things are now a little bit clearer thanks to a research whit paper entirely dedicated to this project. What comes out of it is that Menlo is actually a Research Project / Prototype Device centered around Activity-Based Navigation on Mobile Devices. Here’s the abstract:

We introduce activity-based navigation, which uses human activities derived from sensor data to help people navigate, in particular to retrace a ?trail? previously taken by that person or another person. Such trails may include step counts, walking up/down stairs or taking elevators, compass directions, and photos
taken along a user‘s path, in addition to absolute positioning (GPS and maps) when available. To explore the user experience of activity-based navigation, we built Greenfield, a mobile device interface for finding a car. We conducted a ten participant user study comparing users‘ ability to find cars across three different
presentations of activity-based information as well as verbal instructions. Our results show that activity-based navigation can be used for car finding and suggest its promise more generally for supporting navigation tasks. We present lessons for future activity-based navigation interfaces, and motivate further work in
this space, particularly in the area of robust activity inference.